The production of crystal wafers typically involves cleaning a wafer with an alkali or acid solution, and then rinsing the wafer with purified water so as to remove the solution and any contaminants which have found their way onto the wafer. This cleansing heretofore has involved a series of tanks, each of which is flushed with purified water which rinses any wafer (or wafers) contained within the tank. In such a system, wafers are moved from one tank to the next, each successive tank being configured to further cleanse the wafers of any residual solution or contaminants.
Unfortunately, known wafer rinsing systems do not ensure that the water for rinsing the crystal wafers is adequately purified, and thus do not ensure that resultant crystal wafers are free from defects. Accordingly, it would be useful to provide a system whereby water used to rinse the wafers may be monitored to identify any contamination of the supplied water, and if such contamination does exist, to identify the location of the contamination source.